The time Saddam Hussein stood up for the Eritreans, against the Soviets:

[Waachis]

''In 1976 Saddam ordered that the Soviet Embassy, situated next door to the Presidential Palace, be moved to new premises.
When the Soviets refused to obey, the Embassy had its water and electricity cut off.
Two years later, Iraq threatened to break off diplomatic relations with Moscow if the Soviet Union continued to support the Marxist Ethiopian Regime against the ''fraternal'' Eritrean rebels who for a long time had sought to secede from the Ethiopian state.
By that time Hussein was diligently persecuting the Iraqi communists and openly attacking Moscow's ''expansionist'' intentions. ''The Soviet Union,'' he said in a famous interview in the summer of 1978, ''will not be satisfied until the whole world becomes Communist.''

[Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography
By Efraim Karsh, Inari Rautsi, Page 31]

[Nubis]

Informative & interesting.